West Gate Tunnel Project – Utilities
Widening the West Gate Freeway from 8 to 12 lanes, 6.8km of tunnelling, a bridge over the Maribyrnong River, and 14km of new and improved cycling and walking paths.
Managing the design process for numerous electrical, gas, water and communications utility relocations in the project’s West Zone. This involved overseeing the designs for relocating 220kV and 22kV/66kV circuits.
Problem
Facing congested utility easements, waterways, soil contamination and stringent stakeholder requirements, FSC worked collaboratively with the construction management team, designers, client and asset owners to not only develop effective utility relocation designs, but fulfil complex design management processes and industry standards. Under the team’s leadership, all utility relocation designs were completed to the tight deadlines – a critical step in enabling permanent works.
Solution
To meet timelines and reduce the number of re-designs, the FSC team produced design alignments in-house instead of relying on the utilities providers. This allowed relocation designs for AusNet’s 220kV HV assets to be completed in just 3 months, after having previously been stuck in preliminary design for a year.
